As I examine them closer I find even softer, pink spots between my fur.  They are in a familiar pattern, a reflection of the constellations I see in the deep night sky.

I feel blessed when a leaf chooses the exact moment, for my pure selfish bliss, to be the moment in time that it lets go. It releases its grasp upon the life giving tree branches, literally and ever so gracefully, falling and twirling, spinning and serenading, to their deaths.

I yell ahead to my husband of many lifetimes “I claim this bench as our own!.”

“I don’t want to be married to you anymore” spoken loudly and firmly….

Warmth beneath my left foot,

as the right

Dangles wildly above it.

… At the local farmers market I bought the largest bunch of peonies I could hold. Securing them into my bike basket, I cared for them on the transport to the house. I would ease my bike slowly over the bumps and turns being sure not to bend stems, or ruffle their precious blooms.

Complete any unfinished business. Now is the time.

This seemed even more poignant to me now as I recalled the funeral pyre smoke drifting across my nostrils all day and all night while I was in Varanasi.

We don’t have as much time as we think.

Now boredom has seemed to settle over me, like a lovely old quilt, that smells, “only a little’ of cat piss. Somehow comforting and familiar and somewhat uncomfortable, but still longing.

I would, on occasion, be distracted from the reading. Squirrel, dog off leash, aforementioned poop

It is happening, the air is growing crisper the apples, now reigning the market, usurping the glorious peaches of palisades.

…sky so vast it swallowed us whole

In my frenzied moments of watching her from afar in the airport security line I struggled with my anxiety;

This is the time for love, for beaming love to others — across the divide of social distancing and sheltering in place. To our trash truck driver with his quick smile as he carries away our refuse. To the brown bears that have awakened and are prowling our mountain.

Between our tears and our heartbreak we witness her soaring. I steal glimpses of her. Her little red car, solid in holding her safely down the mountain roads away from the house into the town. Away from home.